Computer Tips -Tech Info

It turns out that Windows 98 is just too hard for Microsoft to support with a security patch for MS06-15 now. The official support period ends in July, but they’ve announced that this one won’t be getting a patch as the changes would be just too substantial. Some of the mitigation suggestions involve using restricted […]

Ethereal has quite a reputation for itself, I’ve used it in analyzing traffic on the home network and experimenting with virtual images… anyway, it’s a packet sniffer and network protocol analyzer and it now has a new name and new home…. wireshark.org. Apparently the lead developer did not own the rights to the name ethereal […]

It sounds like this vulnerability would take a great deal of user interaction, but cio-today is reporting on a browser vulnerability that affects pretty much every javascript enabled browser. According to Symantec …. “This issue is triggered by utilizing JavaScript ‘OnKeyDown’ events to capture and duplicate keystrokes from users,” and is a way that the […]

It’s about that time again folks…. Monthly Microsoft patch cycle – June patches will be released on the 13th (next Tuesday) and it looks like a big batch. There should be 12 patches this time and at least one of the Windows updates is Critical and at least one of the Office updates is critical. […]

ADTMAG.com has an interesting article talking of the convergance of spyware and more sophisticated phishing attacks. They talk about the convergance of viruses and spam engines that happened in 2003 as a real shift in the dynamic of WHERE junk mail was coming from. Today botnets account for about 90% of the spam online, and […]

It’s quite a dilemma when a software product is billed as more secure than another…. several days back when Mozilla Firefox released v. 1.5.0.4 which fixed a number of security issues, I saw someone comment “I thought firefox was supposed to be secure.” I think there’s a misunderstanding when it comes to software. I think […]

Yes, this is legitimate and officially sanctioned. Microsoft is releasing the beta version of Vista Ultimate for download. This page gives details on the download. It is also possible to request a dvd. (The download is a dvd iso – a bit over 3 GB). It will expire June 1, 2007 (I assume Vista will […]

Google has released a new plugin for firefox that synchronizes various settings from one pc to another making use of a google account. Essentially, it saves certain preferences from your browser to your Google account, then when the browser is launched again it retrieves any changes from the Google Account. This sounds like a great […]

Microsoft says they need to do a better job about disclosing this, but the Genuine Advantage tool contacts Microsoft daily. It doesn’t do this to track your browsing or downloading habits, but to check and see if it’s ok that it’s still running. According to this article, they have some concern that it might not […]

You know, I’ve seen soooo many antivirus vendors that are somewhat ethically challanged claim that cookie files are a big threat, or in worse cases files that the “free” antivirus test downloaded are dangerous “you should be glad we got here in time – where’s our $30 to fix things…” kind of message, but from […]